Friday, January 29, 2010

Okay, yes, I'm a total fail blogger. So from now on I'm going to promise not to make any more promises about what I'm going to write about. Because I'm trying not to live in the past. (No, not really, but I've already written about my holidays in about four different places, and they seem pretty boring to me now.) Anyhoo. It's January 29! Guess what that means! It means tomorrow, at 11 pm, I am leaving for ÖSTERREICH!!! (Austria for you non-Germans out there). I have my Koffer packed, camera batteries charged, and muscles pumped (or they will be after rowing and dance lessons tonight) for seven days of skiing in the Alps! Woot woot! I get back February 7 at one in the morning. My host parents and Clara are spending the weekend in London (Sebastian has work and Clara has a friend) so Simon is picking me up from the bus, and then I'll probably spend the whole day sleeping. Hopefully I'll get to upload pictures as well! Because the coming week won't allow a lot of time- today we got our new school schedule, which is wayyy more intense than last semesters' in my opinion. I don't really like it at all, although we do have a free period on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, so I get an extra half hour of sleep... frankly, I'd rather get up a little earlier and be done earlier, rather than at 2:30 (my shortest day). Plus, my favorite classes (English and Biology) have been reduced to twice a week each, whereas my least favorite (German and Physik) are three times a week, with one double period in German. Luckily, I have my AFS trip to Bad Honnef February 23-28, so I get to miss school, and then we have easter break for two weeks, and then in May we have two four-day weekends on which I'm hoping to do some travel of sorts. We'll see. So while I do rather detest the idea of my new German schedule, I do appreciate the vacations.
For a while during my Praktikum it was FREEZING- hovering around 0° fahrenheit, and going down to -10 at one point. And I was walking around Frohnau and Hermsdorf, wearing my black overalls and black jacket, but with no scarf or gloves... so that bit wasn't that fun. It wasn't a terribly complicated job, and I didn't find it all that exciting, but it was a fun experience. I didn't get to go up on the roof ever because a) I'm only a praktikantin and b) Jörg is my host mother's younger brother, and if I fell off a roof I bet he'd really get beaten up. But I did get to see a whole lot of pretty cool houses, and quite a few stinkers as well. They gave me some ideas on how not to live.
Yesterday I saw AVATAR! It was pretty much the coolest idea ever. And now I really want an avatar. Plus I saw it in German and understood the whole thing, so score one for me! I think I'm starting to get to the place where I can begin to call myself conversationally fluent. I would often be talking with people whose chimneys we were sweeping, and they would look at me curiously and ask me where I was from, and when I said America they were momentarily shocked, as though they'd expected me to say Bayern or Dortmund or something. Which is kinda cool, if I do say so myself.
Until February...
P.S. February 12 is my 5-month mark. 5 months out of ten. That means I'll be halfway through! Which is a really ridiculous prospect.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

happy thoughts

Something that made me cheery today: I was showing Clara my bucket list, and she decided to make one of her own. At the moment it's very short, but its contents are the following: visit Thailand, visit Jakob's host family, go to Sweden, become an aunt, go to Legoland, and visit the Landrys. (The last was actually higher on the list, but I wanted it to have more punch.) HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! longggg post coming soon... or many shorts...